By: Azhar Azam
A recent AP report finds that the rape of Rohingya Muslim women has been ‘sweeping’ and ‘methodical’ after interviewing 29 women and girls ‘separately’ and ‘extensively’ with age range between 13 and 35 who fled Myanmar to Bangladesh.
A woman, 22, shared with Associated Press the searing episode of Myanmar security forces’ sexual assault while she and her husband were sleeping in their home on a night of June.
Seven soldiers raided her house, shot her husband in the chest and slit his throat, and gang-raped her. Just a few days back, she had heard of the killing of her parents and also about his brother who was missing.
Myanmar security forces has systematically been employing rape and sexual violence as a terror tool and killing Muslims, billed as ‘ethnic cleansing’ to suppress voices of basic human rights in its state of Rakhine (Arakan).
According to a most conservative estimate by an international humanitarian aid group – Doctor without Borders – 6,700 Rohingya people have been killed as a result of violence in Rakhine between August 25 and September 24.
The report further estimates that this toll by violence includes no less than 730 children below the age of five who also lost their lives in ‘clearance operation’ conducted by Myanmar security forces
Also known as MSF – acronym of Médecins Sans Frontières – the philanthropic body believes that the numbers of killings are likely to be much higher as the surveys did not account for all the displaced persons settled in refugee camps and also the families who never fled Myanmar.
There were 69% violence-related deaths, 9% burnt to deaths in their houses, and 5% beaten to deaths. Among the children killed below the age of five – 59% were shot, 15% burnt alive in their homes, 7% beaten to deaths, and 2% died in landmine blasts.
Dr. Sidney Wong explained the Burmese brutality that there were also the reports that the ‘entire families who were perished after they were locked inside their homes, while they were set alight’.
Nearly 650,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to seek refuge in Bangladesh since the Burmese military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine in the aftermath of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) attacks.
In an interview with Dhaka Tribune, an ARSA commander Abdus Shakoor defended his attack with 200-natives (out of various attacks by several groups) on Myanmar border police posts and a military base on August 25.
'To save our people, to save our mothers and sisters, to take back our rights, we took up sticks, and axes, and knives and rose up against oppressors.’
Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, was under British colonial rule during 1824-1942 before Japan invaded; pushing British out of the territory. British evacuation provoked Burmese nationalists to attack Muslims communities in then-Burma.
In 1945, British liberated Burma from Japan with the help of Burmese nationalists and latter created independent Union of Burma in 1948; defying promise to give autonomy to Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine (Arakan), living in the land since 8th century.
Tensions soared between the newly established Burma and Rohingya Muslims; most of whom wanted Arakan inclusion in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Jinnah however regretted due to lesser Muslims’ proportionate to Burmese population and opined that Rohingya Muslims should strive for their rights within Burma.
In 1978, General Ne Win conducted a large scale military operation Nagamin (also known as Operation King Dragon) in northern Arakan that targeted and killed Rohingya Muslims. The operation forced 250,000 people to migrate Bangladesh – one million Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to various countries.
Burma Citizenship Law enacted in 1982 which no longer recognized Rohingya as citizens of Burma – ensuing 800,000 Rohingya Muslims (1.1 million, according to some reports) stateless. Since then, Muslims in the region are the victims of dreaded exploitations by Burmese army including forced labor, rape, and religious torment.
Rohingya Muslims cannot travel without authorization, prohibited to work outside their villages, and even cannot marry without permission. They are also effectively barred to vote in General Elections so have no political representation in the state’s parliament to raise voice for harboring and protecting their basic rights.
They are the most persecuted community in the world that has been crammed between Myanmar (Formerly Burma) and Bangladesh (Formerly East Pakistan). Neither of the countries is willing to stomach them as citizen; leaving almost a million people at the disposal of high hills, tough weather, and miserable food and health conditions.
The recent spat in Rakhine began in 2012 when clashes between Muslims and Buddhists killed nearly 100 people, mostly Muslims; displacing 135,000 Muslims in IDP camps and forcing migration to tens of thousands as well. The IDPs and refugees headcount continues to grow immensely since then.
Myanmar military and Buddhist militants blazed and razed their homes across villages; burnt alive, tortured, and killed a number of men, women, and children; and gang raped women; flouting all international human rights codes.
A flash report by United Nations’ OHCHR published in February 2017 gives the following statistics, based on interviews with Rohingya Muslims fleeing from Myanmar (testimonies of witnesses):
· 65% reported killings
· 43% reported rapes (up to 52% in women, >18 years)
· 31% reported sexual violence
· 56% reported disappearances
· 64% reported beatings
· 64% reported burning or destruction of property
· 40% reported looting/theft of property
Majority of the rape victims were raped by more than one soldier, usually three to four and even up to eight soldiers.
In May this year, Myanmar military and Border Police Guards raped at least 32 Rohingya women in Kyan Taung area of Rakhine/Arakan. Arakan Rohingya National Organization (ARNO) strongly condemned this act of cruelty to victimize innocent women and urged United National to probe this loathsome act – futile though like many such earlier demands.
This outrageous genocide of by Myanmar military and Buddhist extremists did not pose a serious concern to ‘stability and development in the state’ but a scarce reprisal by Rohingya Muslims in October 2016 did!
On 9-October-2016, few Rohingya Muslims ambushed on Myanmar’s Border Guard Police (BGP) that killing nine policemen. International Crisis Group (ICG) was quick to declare it ‘a new Muslim insurgency’ in its report on 21-December-2016 that ‘threatens the prospects of stability and development in the state’ and ‘has serious implications’.
The Group muted on Rohingya Muslims’ killings, rapes, sexual violence, and even babies stabbed who were crying for milk to their mothers by Myanmar military, traced Muslim insurgent group Harakah al-Yaqin (HaY or Faith Movement) immediately. It also quickly uncovered that the movement is ‘led by a committee of Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia’.
‘HaY was established and overseen by a committee of some twenty senior leaders headquartered in Mecca, with at least one member based in Madina.’ Recruitment and training of militia is said to be started in 2013 and supported by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Ata Ullah or Hafiz Tohar, alias Ameer Abu Ammar and Abu Ammar Jununi, was identified in the backlash on brutal Myanmar forces and Buddhist extremists. Ata Ullah was born in Karachi and brought up and studied in Mecca – Saudi Arabia. HuY is now known as Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and has estimated of 500 -600 fighters.
Myanmar and Indian intelligence agencies propagate that ARSA’s religious ideology comes from a group of Islamic clergy based in Saudi Arabia but its fighting commanders are all trained in Pakistan. Typical Indian mindset, blamed Lashkar-e-Taiba for picking recruits from refugee camps on Myanmar-Bangladesh border after 2012 riots.
But Rohingya diaspora is now escalating!
As Myanmar military oppression on Rohingya Muslims is growing, ARSA is burgeoning simultaneously, and with more intensity.
On 25-August-2017, in retaliation to the brutal crackdown by Myanmar’s security forces on Muslims that killed thousands and fled over a million, around 150 ARSA members armed with machetes, swords, deadly weapons and other armory carried out nearly 20 attacks on Burmese police camps and military bases leaving 71 dead and wounding many.
Yet again, Myanmar and Indian media is trying to figure out Pakistan connection with this indigenous Rohingya movement by indulging Hafiz Saeed from nowhere. In July 2015, Mizzima, a Myanmar daily, accused Lashkar-Taiba (LeT) and its adjoins Jamat-ud-Dawa (JuD) and Falah-e-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF) for radicalizing Rohingya Muslims on Myanmar-Bangladesh borders referring Indian intelligence sources.
'They (Indian intelligence) told Mizzima that LET through its front, Jamat-ud-Dawa (JUD) and Fala-I-Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), is ‘extremely active’ among the Rohingyas and other Muslims in Myanmar under cover of relief and rehabilitation.'
'In July 2012, during the Rakhine state riots in Myanmar, the LET front JUD organized ‘Difa-e-Mussalman Arakan Conference’ in Karachi and exhorted its cadres to recruit Rohingyas to avenge the riots.'
The newspaper also shares a picture showing Maulana Abdul Qudus Bermi of Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami (HuJ-I) Arakan (now merged into ARSA), migrated to Pakistan in 1980s, accompanying Hafiz Saeed in the conference to validate the indictment. Maulana is also supposed to hire Ata Ullah (Hafiz Tohar) for conducting activities in Myanmar.
The picture had gone viral in India and Indian media is still living off this five years old photograph to deport 14,000 immigrants back to Myanmar.
This demonstrations an obvious Indian influence in Myanmar and Bangladesh and to divert the attention of international community from grim humanitarian crisis and Myanmar’s atrocities on the helpless Rohingya Muslims.
But these are only a few sections in the Muslim countries who are effectively trying to stop Myanmar’s ruthless terrorism, otherwise, needless to mention, the frightful restraint by Muslim rulers who can sacrifice ‘all others’ to protect their regimes, kingdoms, lives, and lavish lifestyles.
Not just prayers, financial aids and diplomatic roars; Rohingya Muslims need military support to encounter this callous state terrorism and hence is a primitive test for Saudi-led Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT).
How strikingly great Iqbal (May Allah have mercy on him) delineated such a conduct lyrically: